


Even Without Knowing

by Nununununu



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Enemies to Lovers, Enthusiastic Consent, Face-Fucking, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Temporary Amnesia, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:16:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: Din has no idea about the krayt dragon until he’s being eaten by it.And then he forgets himself, and everything that comes with it. At least until he's reminded again.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 40
Kudos: 258
Collections: Covert Discord New Years Fic Exchange





	Even Without Knowing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beskarheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beskarheart/gifts).



> For BeskarHeart, whose prompts were so much fun to write :D I hope you like this - and Happy New Year to you and everyone over on the discord <3
> 
> AU in some ways here, but also not (update: slightly edited)

Din has no idea about the krayt dragon until he’s being eaten by it.

Still, things start some time before that. He learns of the possibility another Mandalorian might be on Tatooine. _Is_ on Tatooine, apparently. For obvious reasons, there’s some question as to whether his source is reliable. He could do more to _encourage_ further detail from the informant, but frankly he has no desire to linger. The informant’s pleading assurances crawl under his skin with the thoughts of blood-stained stolen beskar; the stench in the alleyway seeps with it through every gap in his armour. The child is restless and tired.

He may have seen worse, but he doesn’t have to see this.

Din’s given his word so he doesn’t deal out death directly. He just walks away instead.

The journey to Tatooine doesn’t take long. The child eats, sleeps, eats, gets cranky, has a bath in a bowl Din washes tiny clothes in after. Thinks of the lack of water at their destination and lets the child stay in longer than usual before making a start on said laundry, tiny hands swirling back and forth to make ripples. He hadn’t known what to do at first, back when Din accepted that looking after the kid would involve such tasks; it was hard to say who had been the more daunted. The child’s body stiff and unresponsive on being shown the shallow bowl of water in a way that made unpleasant possibilities crowd in at the darker corners of Din’s mind. But the little one had relaxed on realising the bath was warm – something Din had honestly only considered as an afterthought, used to minimal, quick scrubs in the sonic himself and lacking memories of experiencing anything similar as a child to use as a guide. The kid’s tentative enjoyment had made something ball up in his chest until it felt like the rest of him might crumple, and Din had cautiously allowed himself to hope that perhaps the initial reaction had been due to unfamiliarity with the concept, which was bad, but not as bad as other options.

The kid gives every impression of thoroughly enjoying his bath now, gurgling in approval as Din uses a clean cloth with regular swipes of soap to carefully clean the tiny body, attempting every now and again to gently encourage the child to participate in the ritual. Nodding to show approval when tiny hands grab the cloth and rub it clumsily against the rounded belly in place of attempting to simply chew the fabric, as the child had at first.

He’s too young to properly wash himself yet. But the kid seems to appreciate the chance to participate and make a play at independence, even if he then does gouge sharp little claws into a sliver of soap and seek to sneak a sample.

“That’s not for eating,” Finding a towel for the child after, Din clumsily swaddles him after a careful patting to take the worst off, leaving a tiny hand free to take the glove experience has him then passing over, the little one seeming to find the thing fascinating enough to investigate and exclaim over instead of escaping the towel to scamper around the ship butt naked, as he had sought to do a time or two in the past.

The little one’s content as such to stay nearby while Din washes the tiny outfits, especially when a second arm wiggles free to wave around and he passes over the partner to that glove. He finds himself talking back to the child occasionally, naming something or other when the kid seems to be exclaiming over or even just looking at it – sometimes in Basic, sometimes in whatever other tongue the kid shows an interest in. The little one’s yet to replicate any of the languages, yet to even seem to appear to try, but his large dark eyes scan Din’s helmet curiously.

“Atu,” The kid waves one of the gloves solemnly when Din’s mouth and throat run out of words, as if his own body is surprised by how much he’s talked.

“Atu,” He manages even so, and the kid nods, as if pleased to have his own contribution recognised.

The laundry gets put out, a fresh set of soft clothes more comfortable for sleeping in put on – a recent outfit cobbled together out of an old top and Din’s meagre but slowly improving sewing skills – and the kid stirs, recognising the chance to stretch his legs before what’s considered bedtime while aboard the ship.

Din empties the bowl, finds a small snack and fresh water for a drink, ambles after the little one to ensure he doesn’t get into anything he shouldn’t, props his hip against a wall for a bit when the kid decides to play some game of his own devising. Thinks of cataloguing something or even just composing a mental shopping list of what things the kid needs that they might be able to pick up on Tatooine perhaps, but finds himself watching that game for the most part instead, ready to sink down beside the kid and offer the snack and drink when it trails off.

The little one’s sleepy after, in the way that indicates a good number of hours are needed rather than a nap, and brushing teeth is only a battle in so far as he doesn’t want to open his mouth. Din hasn’t put his gloves back on; the kid runs his tiny hands over Din’s fingers, murmuring as if perhaps at the feel of them, and this proves distraction enough that Din’s able to gently get those teeth clean.

“Mmm,” The kid surfaces enough from his doze to sit on the privy and do what needs to be done – Din learnt his lesson about not insisting on this last thing early on – while he props the little one up and aims his helmet the other way, pretending not to be present to give the child some privacy. Sorts him out after, gets those hands clean, and then it’s into the hammock, the kid’s eyes already closing as he yawns.

Din stays for a few minutes, rocking the hammock a little, even when he’s pretty sure the kid’s already asleep. Looks at that tiny face and feels –

Something, anyway. Gratefulness bedtime was achieved without upset or tantrums.

He almost doesn’t know what to do with himself after.

Someone had asked him once what he does for entertainment – possibly as an attempt to flirt; possibly as part of a con. His concentration had been on establishing that they were the correct target, given the lack of payment otherwise. He’d say nothing like that appeals to him – the cards the target had been rifling through; the glass of alcohol in their hand – and he’d say that the hand itself or its owner hadn’t appealed either, and all of this is true to an extent, certainly true enough to count.

So what _does_ he do for entertainment, that target might then have asked, if such distractions don’t appeal. Din checks their course and casts an eye over the controls in the cockpit to ensure everything remains in order and as expected – buttons have been mysteriously depressed or switches altered in position at times since taking on board a particular little passenger – and then services some of his less recently used weapons, the more and most recently used weapons already seen to, and always with an ear out for the kid. He checks over his armour likewise, removing it and inspecting it piece by piece, not letting himself think of anything in particular – the act almost perhaps as soothing, if he were to admit it, as baths and the swaddling look set to become for the kid.

Not perhaps as soothing as putting the armour back on after; even out here in space, alone with the kid on the Razor Crest, there’s a feeling of _wrongness_ that comes in not wearing it. His body not weighted down enough; his limbs the wrong shape. He glances at the kid, finds the little one dreaming, and takes a quick shower. Batters the dirt out of a few of his own clothes in the sonic after, although he’s already zipped up in a clean flightsuit himself by then, no swaddling in a towel required. Squints into the small handheld mirror, the only one he owns, after. Shaves.

This isn’t entertainment exactly, but taking the time for it does feel like a luxury. Going without or growing it more both come with their own niggles, not in the least because he finds more of a beard liable to itch under the helmet. Taking the time to see to what he has feels almost too indulgent – he only does it for himself, after all. But it’s something to take his gaze away from the rest of his face when he catches sight of the parts that make it up in the mirror. Something to focus on that’s his and doesn’t feel like a stranger’s.

The rest of it is unimportant.

They’ll make Tatooine in good time; he has the chance for some sleep before they need to prepare themselves further. Din crawls onto his bed, flips a blanket over his legs and doesn’t let himself acknowledge the comfort of the small space given the absence of his armour – stacked neatly nearby the berth for him to build himself out of again on waking.

Listens to the soft sounds of the child’s steady breaths, looking at the press of the little one’s body outlined against the fabric of the hammock until his eyes close, and doesn’t let himself consciously acknowledge these things as a comfort either.

-^-

They sleep and wake and drink and eat and the child doesn’t want his breakfast, steadfastly refusing it until Din gives in and perches him on his knee and feeds him each bite, the food then placidly received for the most part.

“But you can’t get this down fast enough usually,” gets no answer except for a slight grumble under the child’s breath.

Maybe familiarity has become uninspiring? Din makes a mental note to look for alternatives planetside.

The kid perks up on spotting Tatooine through the viewscreen when they’re up in the cockpit at leat, and they manage to land without any ropey moments thanks to unexpected ‘helping’, although the kid does drum both hands against his seat for the entirety of the descent. It’s better than tears or demands for attention when attention really can’t be given, and so Din pays it little heed, and the kid scampers into the sling Din’s fashioned for him out of a bag when it’s time to leave the ship.

A brief stop off at Mos Eisley, the ship and child examined over with varied exclamations of wildly differing emotions by one Peli Motto – Din more pleased to see a friendly face himself than he’d anticipated, not in the least because of her unambiguous and unchanging regard for the child – and then he’s borrowing a speeder and they’re setting off after those rumours.

It feels good to be on the track of another Mandalorian, if Mandalorian they are. There’s every possibility the information will be wrong. But Din makes good time and speaks to the Tuskens he encounters, showing the child how to sign a greeting to a kid twice the little one’s height when a small masked face peers around a caretaker’s legs, only to be shooed back towards the tent they’d escaped.

The little one coos in delight and the older kid freezes, looking between their displeased caretaker and the child. Pleading in the curve of their back and slope of their shoulders until their caretaker softens with a weary fondness Din avoids recognising, and ushers their kid over to his own – not his own – child.

The two young ones make ever more eager steps at getting to know one another, and then play in the sand until sleep claims them both in a blanket-bundle a safe distance from the fireside, and Din talks more with the group who become his hosts until early the next morning.

It’s refreshingly pleasant to be amongst people who take it both as a positive and a given that he should have no desire to remove his helmet.

The encounter is almost guiltily relaxing for these reasons as such, which is why it’s a little jarring when it shouldn’t be the next day when an additional couple of Tuskens join them, ones who have encountered the almost entirely human and entirely hostile inhabitants from the small and previously unheard of remains of a ramshackle, piss-poor town that is Mos Pelgo, and impart the half-anticipated revelation that the Mandalorian there is not a Mandalorian at all, but a false one, given that these new additions to the group have observed the man in question removing his helmet.

The anger that grips Din then is hot and fierce, only made all the more so by the disappointment he crushes bitterly down – paired with a sting of betrayal, which is absurd.

Grief too, given the most likely fate of the armour’s rightful owner.

“Come on,” Din therefore holds a saddlebag open for the kid to climb in, rather than the sling, and ensures the little one is safe and secure before straddling the speeder himself, thanking his hosts and the two newcomers before setting off once more.

So it’s to be a hunt.

When they arrive at Mos Pelgo, they don’t show themselves. Instead they find a place a reasonable distance out of town to hole up in, one of the rare areas with a scrap of shade from the unrelenting suns. The kid putters about in that meagre shadow, occasionally venturing very slightly beyond it only to scuttle back, taking it upon himself to seemingly scold Din for appearing to only lie there on his stomach and be boring. Din rubs a long ear between gloved finger and thumb briefly, until the child seems pacified, and then continues to do so, watching the town through his scope, the lens strong enough to make out grim, tired-faced people dredging their way through the heat as if they no longer notice it, going about the prosaic minutiae of life surrounded by sand.

From this far away, it all appears arbitrary.

There’s no sign of the false Mandalorian. Din leaves off his observation for long enough to help the child sip water from a canteen almost bigger than he is, holding it steady while the little hands grapple with the smooth metal, the child babbling between mouthfuls.

He spots some sort of lizard, after, resulting in Din doing a fairly graceless dive in order to prevent the child from dashing out from their small amount of cover and betraying their position to anyone watching from the direction of the town.

He suspects there might not be anyone watching, which could spell complacency – the inhabitants believe, or the false Mandalorian believes, their supposed protector in stolen armour sufficient to not need to be wary of threat.

It’s difficult to believe that. More likely is the possibility that –

“Howdy, stranger. Want to tell me what it is you’re doing out here and what your interest in that there town is?”

Already rolling over and upwards, Din draws his blaster at the same time as scooping up the child in his other arm, tucking the little one under his cape and behind him as much as possible even as the kid lets out a bleat of protest.

The false Mandalorian is silhouetted by the suns behind him, appeared as if out of nowhere, without even the tell-tale sound of the stolen jetpack on his shoulders to give him away. Tall and rangy, built like a stiff breeze would bowl him over if such a thing existed on Tatooine, or so goes the first impression Din gets of the imposter.

That and the man's head is bare of the helmet.

Din doesn’t look further; is already shooting, in fact. A warning shot to the sand in front of the imposter’s feet to get him further back – not that he’s close, but he’s close _enough_ , and the child is struggling against the careful restraint of Din’s hand. Another shot to the man’s arm above the vambrace, right at the vulnerable inside of the elbow, to make him drop the blaster he’s got trained on Din in return – who should have known better than to stay in one place for so long, who should have known better than to bring the child, what was he _thinking_ –

Not much at all, apparently. Not much still, it seems, either. The other man’s wearing a red shirt like a target for training practice, and absolutely no other visible form of protection beyond the entirely ill-fitting and battered pieces of armour that don’t even form a full set. For all Din might have prepared himself, the shock of actually seeing this is immense; however this man might have acquired it, it’s the same as setting eyes on someone garbed in clothes robbed from a corpse.

That anger swells back inside Din alongside a thick, gut-rattling kind of horror that seems set to shoves its way up into his throat and choke him. While the imposter neatly dodges the shot to his elbow, getting that helmet on as he does, the sidestep he makes takes him right into the next one Din’s got lined up for his abdomen.

“What the hell?” The imposter’s saying, or something much like it, but Din ignores this, goes to take that second shot, twitches his blaster up at the last second to fire at the man’s throat instead, unprotected by the ill-fitting helmet he has _no right_ to wear –

The child makes an awful noise within the folds of his cape, shrill and bedevilling, like no sound Din’s ever heard him make. Little pointed teeth clamp down hard, doing their utmost to pierce the leather of his glove as the kid bites his hand, tiny body writhing harder than ever as if panicked.

_Shit shit shit._

Din’s too well-trained to freeze, but he does uncharacteristically falter, instinct immediately clamouring for him to check on the little one as he’s gripped by the bone-cold certainty something is wrong, but the other man’s blaster is still trained on him and so far too close to the kid.

And the ground starts shaking.

“Kriff, wait, what – is a _child_ making that noise? Tell me you don’t seriously have a kid there with you,” The other man stares at Din through the cracked visor of the stolen helmet, blaster lowering a slight but noticeable inch before jerking _away_ from Din’s hip and thus the location of the child.

Staring back at the other man, Din has little time to think on this development, the rumbling beneath their feet growing towards a crescendo, enough to make him fight to keep his balance on the shifting sand, trapped by the knowledge that swinging around to see what is happening – what is _approaching_ them – will involve turning his back on the imposter.

“Go on,” The other man has to near shout to be heard, “Go on, get the kid out of here. We can take this up again another time.”

“ _No_ ,” It’s just an earthquake – no such thing as ‘just’ an earthquake – Din’s wholly, terribly certain this is no earthquake at all, but something even worse. Still the imposter is firing up his jetpack, undoubtedly seeking to snatch the chance to make a quick getaway, and Din has the choice whether to try to lunge at him and drag him back down, whether – and where – to shoot him or not.

The child _screams_.

The world seems to both explode and shatter around them even as the other man is abruptly _right there_ , crashing into Din forcefully enough to send him staggering out of the way of – something, something unbelievably massive and _alive_ and filled with so, so many huge teeth that snap together around the space he’d just been occupying.

“ _What_ –” The imposter had just saved his life – Din’s and the child – had he saved their lives? And equally importantly, _why?_

There’s no opportunity to discover the answer for this. Din’s got the jetpack ignited, firming his grip on the child as he readies every weapon at his command as he starts to streak away from the massive creature attacking them, and –

That nightmare mouth smashes back down on top of them as the child screams a second time and that’s it, they’re gone.

-^-

For what feels like a long time after that, there’s only pain.

He wakes, but nothing makes sense. The world is darkness and more darkness, and then there’s a horrendous scraping, clanging noise when something carefully moves his head, the echoes of it loud enough he has to grit his teeth. A blazing hot stab of something at the top of his shoulder follows right after, bad enough to almost wipe his awareness of everything else out.

A dizzying whirl rises up to take him as that something – or someone – seeks to move him again and he struggles not to surrender to it, even as it becomes that or vomit into whatever it is that’s _closed right over his face, fuck_ ; that or cry out when the pain hits him again even harder, like a knife shoved into each eyeball, aiming in towards his brain.

By the time his awareness gutters out, it’s almost a relief.

Consciousness returns a second time when something presses – or depresses – against his chest. There’s a weight there, unyielding and unbearable before it lightens, bringing with it a rush of helpless relief. Then there’s a cautious rifling of fabric, a peeling back, before unexpected wetness blooms against the pain-filled space between his neck and shoulder, shockingly cool in a closed-in, closed-off world where everything else seems far too hot, the cloth leaching away some of the fire that’s built up.

Between that and the pain in his head, the injury between his neck and shoulder is preferable, even if it doesn’t feel much like it in the moment. He tries to move his arm to feel for the reason for the wetness and is punished for that thought, the fire leaping into startling clarity, all the heat of it jabbing back into the meat of him, tearing down his side like his ribs are a shell that’s all cracked, sharp enough he’s forced to pant.

Where the hell is he? What’s happening? What _happened_? A noise of protest builds in the back of his throat and he lashes out with his other arm instinctively, as if by doing so it will prove somehow possible to fight the pain.

“Easy, easy.”

His wild swing finds no target, until it does abruptly and a hand guides his firmly yet almost gently away; he doesn’t recognise the voice. A man, not that young by the sound of it, but not precisely what might be defined as ‘old’ either; an implication of an unfamiliar drawl.

“You’re safe as any of us can be; got almost all the poison out of you, I reckon, though you’re probably still feeling its effects, and just got some bleeding left to see to. We’ve got water, enough food to keep us going, bacta and shelter, and aren’t under attack,” There’s a bit of a smile to the other man’s voice by the sound of it, although he has no idea why, along with what is perhaps a touch of rue.

He doesn’t know the reason for this either.

“Sure am glad you’ve revived enough to be moving, even if I don’t recommend doing so,” He’s next informed, “Not least because there’s a little green bean here who might be all tuckered out and sleeping right now, but still would probably prefer it if you didn’t knock me out at least until we’ve finished making sure his daddy’s not going to expire.”

Far less of that makes sense than it possibly should. Are there others here who are also injured? And who is this man?

“Who are you?” His voice doesn’t want to make it out; he has to try three times just to produce even a rasp.

This is only one of many questions that fight to make their way onto his tongue, the most important being _who am I._

Gasping a little with the effort of it, he bites the rest back for now. Too many unknowns to risk it.

“Why now, I would be marshal of these here parts,” Says the self-proclaimed marshal, much like he’s about to tack something else on after it, but has second thoughts, “You feel up to helping get any more bacta on you? Because I managed to see to the worst of the rest, but you’ve still a fair way to go – and you’re bleeding from under your helmet, which ain’t a great sign for all you might not want me doing something about it.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to –?” He can still barely speak, the sentence breaking off into nothing halfway. His head’s propped on something, tipping his chin forwards, and the unforgiving edge of the thing stuck over his face is digging uncomfortably into his chest below his clavicle, the inside of it close enough that his breath just gusts back over his face each time he exhales.

Fumbling for it with his good hand, he goes to shove it up and off, claustrophobia abruptly clawing at him along with the feeling of being trapped.

Then stops, for no reason he can discern.

“Oh hey, hey now, wait a sec,” A gloved hand catches his right as he goes to resume removing the thing, the grip not hard, but nonetheless enough to halt him all over again even as he pushes back at it, the attempt much weaker than it should have been given the fresh jolt of raw-edged pain that claws its way down from between his neck and shoulder, searing into his ribs. The fingers on his ease up a little, but don’t let go. “You know, I don’t think you want to go doing that.”

“Why?” It comes out as a growl this time, ragged with a lack of air and the pain still wracking him, and with the sheer incomprehensibility of it all, his own reaction included, “You said – it’s a helmet. That I’ve got a head injury.”

Whatever it is he’s wearing, it feels like it’s suffocating him and his head _hurts_. Now his attention has been drawn to it, he can feel how his hair is wet with blood; how there’s the warmth of it rolling down from his forehead and the side of his neck; how it’s soaking into his clothes. If his head wasn’t angled forwards, it would probably be all in his face.

Without the helmet on, he might be able to see something too – like the man he’s more or less at the mercy of right now, a thought that doesn’t sit well at all. Without it on –

He could be seen, as well. There shouldn’t be any reason why this once more makes him pause.

“So why _wouldn’t_ I want to take it off?” In truth, he’s asking himself as much as the other man.

There’s a beat.

“You don’t remember?” The man’s voice is cautious; his restraining hand doesn’t move, “ _No living thing may see my face._ Last thing you said to me before coming this close to expiring. Seemed real important to you.”

_“Why?”_ Honestly, unconsciousness is starting to once more feel like the preferable option – at least then things would stop hurting so much.

“Mm,” There’s a quiet sound of metal on stone – possibly the other man shifting or shrugging – and the hand wrapped around his finally lets go, “Can’t honestly tell you the answer to that. But you were mighty insistent; just about as insistent as you were that I see to the kid.” A little affront creeping into his tone as he follows this up with, “Which I would have done anyway, I’ll have you know.”

“What kid?” The other man had mentioned a ‘little green bean’, but he hadn’t thought it relevant to _him_.

Had he?

Everything is too unclear, too indistinct. He can’t remember. He can’t _think_. But something resonates deep within him at the thought of the child.

The child –

Trying to push himself up on his good elbow to see the little one under discussion has the incomprehensible sliver of world that’s just about become visible lurching around him, pain piercing his skull badly enough tears prickle in the corners of his eyes.

“Whoa, mind yourself; steady there,” Fingers close over his shoulder this time. There’s something there between him and them, something hard and metal like the thing covering his head and face, blocking him from feeling more than a slight pressure.

Is he – wearing armour? It would make sense, given the presence of the helmet. _Why,_ though, still remains another matter.

“Right, come on, lie back down for a bit. Then, when you feel up to it, have another go at getting that helmet off and I’ll pass you the bacta. Just let me know when you’re about to do it first, so I can turn away and shut my eyes tight. Might want to let me feel around the injury too, just in case, but I’m not about to let you go regretting me doing something you were so strongly against when you’re back to remembering about it – not if there are other options we can try first.”

“All right,” Things are awful enough he can only do as suggested, muffling a groan at the relief of it as he rests his head back against the – whatever he’s been leaning on. Which shifts slightly beneath his weight.

Kriff, wait – is it the other man’s knees? Is it, isn’t it. He’s practically lying in the other man’s lap.

“ _Fuck_ ,” He thankfully manages to keep this all but soundless; the curse escaping him in not much more than a puff of shaky breath, a shiver chasing for some unknown reason across his skin.

“Kid’s all right, just tired by the looks of it and upset by everything that went on. Gave him a bit of food and drink while I made a start on patching you up best I could, and then he just conked right out. Spent a whole lot of time before that clinging to you, bawling his eyes out,” Thankfully the marshal’s busy speaking and doesn’t notice his reaction, “Just about broke my heart seeing him like that.”

He can’t explain why, but the thought somehow makes his own heart hurt as well.

“Who is he?” He asks just as the other man starts to once again mention bacta, a little more urgently this time, “Why are you helping me?” No, that’s not right. This is better, “Us.”

A longer pause.

“Damn. You don’t remember your own kid?” A quiet sound like hair or cloth on metal; like maybe the man shakes his head on a long breath, “Wait, scratch that. You don’t need to answer. Just got your brain scrambled, didn’t you, and a special treat of poison from that dragon to boot; it doesn’t go just dosing anyone with that stuff. No need to explain anything.”

Or fail to explain, more like. There’s a low noise of pain mingled with confused frustration that takes him a moment to realise originates from himself.

“All right, I’m going to insist on us figuring out something to do with that bacta now, friend; you’re getting quite a bit of a puddle beneath you and all over the knees of my pants. Then I’ll help you see your kid. Don’t want to have you passing out on him if we try that first.”

“Could you check on him? Please,” He can’t say why this should feel so important to establish, but it does.

“Sure can do,” A short pause from the other man and a shift of his body, as he stretches to one side to do as much, “Yep, still good; still fast asleep. Brow all wrinkled up, but no harm seems to have come to him, other than tiring himself out worrying for his daddy.”

“I’m – I’m not,” He can’t say why he feels so sure of this either, or why the certainty should sit like a great heavy stone inside his already aching chest, an ache to it that implies it could become more painful somehow than anything else if only he remembered, “I’m not that.”

“Come now, you didn’t see how upset he was,” The other man helps prop him up further when he sets his jaw and tries once again to rise, “I’m going to shut my eyes now, all right? Bacta spray’s right here.” It’s pressed into his hand, “Reckon you can manage?”

“Yeah,” He can do this. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel like it. The kid needs him and – well. That’s important, he’s sure of it.

So he will.

-^-

“Why?” Is the question he has again for Vanth, when he’s got the other man’s name – last name? – but still not his own.

Not the child’s, either.

The kid’s sleeping bundled up on his lap while he cautiously shifts until he’s leaning against the rough wall of the poorly lit hollow they’re in, little more than a nook in some rocky edifice Vanth claims sits at one point in the desert among a whole lot of others just like it; decent camouflage.

Decent camouflage for what, he’d asked, and just got a brief lift of an eyebrow in response, and “most things. But not everything.”

“But enough?” He’d pushed, looking at the face of the still sleeping child. Something so _familiar_ about it, something that still sat so tight and heavy in his chest, even if a fresh application of bacta had helped the pain in his ribs, as well as knitting back together some of his head.

Vanth had surrendered over the scarf he wore around his neck with seemingly nary a qualm, when he’d hesitated before putting back on his helmet, the metal slick on the inside with a rime of blood and sweat, and the stench of the poison that had seeped out of him thanks to the efforts of the other man.

The bacta spray sits empty now to one side of the small nook, along with that dirtied scarf, the inside of the helmet wiped clean enough to tolerate, if he pushes the urge to give it a proper cleaning aside for some later time. He’ll have to find some way of recompensing this man. How had they met? And why had Vanth helped him – and the child?

“I was bitten. The dragon bit me,” He’s worked this out for himself on feeling the now mostly healed gash from a tremendous tooth in that gap between his neck and his shoulder.

“Near enough ate you for supper, yeah,” Propped against the wall opposite him, Vanth confirms. He’s a curious creature, in armour similar to his own but far older and in far worse condition, the helmet on the ground near his hip.

While it’s as damaged as the rest of the pieces, the sight of that helmet sends something spiralling inside him, just out of reach, similar in a sense as looking at the child. The little one is wrapped in Vanth’s jacket, bundled up against the cold, murmuring as he dreams. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable and, when he’d checked, the little body had indeed seemed unharmed.

He might not know who this kid is, but he knows for definite that he owes Vanth for the little one’s lack of injuries.

“You saved us,” He’s sure of this, but it gets a head shake.

“Afraid not, friend,” He gets a crooked smile for it too; no sign of dishonesty in the lines of the other man’s face or his voice, “Not exactly, anyway. Tried to get the pair of you out the way, but that bastard dragon took a good chomp out of you before I could; got you right where that armour doesn’t cover. Kid seemed unconscious; you pushed him towards me, telling me to take care of him, and then tried to take the dragon on all by yourself.” A mild huff as he scuffs at the ground with the toe of his boot, “That jetpack over there of mine tried its best to give out so the dragon near enough swallowed me and the kid when it made another pass, but you distracted it and I managed to just about get far enough away from the thing to hope the kid would be safe for a bit on his own. Hid him here among some of these rocks, where the old bastard don’t much care to go, as there’s nothing usually for it to hunt – but I wasn’t able to get back to you before it had made another attempt to gobble you up and then spat you back out. Head first.”

Yeah, he’d more or less worked that part of it out.

“Couldn’t get to you in time either before you near enough cracked your skull open inside your helmet,” Vanth takes in a breath, as if he’s going to apologise.

“You saved the kid,” He says over any such attempt, and doesn’t try to conceal his gratitude from his tone, “But. _Why_.” Why come back for him; why not take the kid and just see to the pair of them? Why not just see to himself?

And why – when Vanth had already admitted to taking the child away temporarily to collect the bacta and other supplies with them now, then come back? Why respect the demand he’d made of the man; that plea not to remove his helmet at any cost?

His latest request for understanding receives an incredulous stare, “You’re _seriously_ asking why I saved the life of a child?”

“No,” He cuts him off. Cuts to what might be the heart of it as well, perhaps, “No. Did we know each other? Before.”

The look Vanth gives him this time is difficult to describe. He’s drunk a little water, while the man’s eyes were closed. Eaten some sort of dried something too, on Vanth’s insistence, and it’s helped with the spinning of his head. The pain’s far more tolerable now too, thanks to the bacta. But the look in those half-lidded, considering eyes is enough to make him feel somehow pinned in place in a way he can’t blame on any of these things, even though he’s got his helmet back on.

“You tried to kill me,” He’s told after almost too long a time.

“I did?” The prospect sends cold sinking inside him, “We were enemies, then.”

“Don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that,” He gets a lopsided shrug and a bit of a crumpled expression from the other man, one of Vanth’s hands going up to partially shield his mouth, “That is, you weren’t mine anyway, or at least I was hoping you wouldn’t turn out to be. Had never set eyes on you before you tried to shoot me, to tell the truth; I just spotted you scoping out my town. Couldn’t take the chance of not heading you off before you got there, if you were a bandit or the like.”

“A bandit?” For all he supposes it could be possible, it doesn’t feel like it fits with what little idea he has of himself.

“Yeah, I realised you ain’t that from pretty much the moment I first saw you properly – and saw the kid – but Mos Pelgo gets its fair share of them and we’re still picking ourselves up from the last lot of buggers who got the jump on me,” Vanth’s look has turned sideways, thumb scraping his beard, “I do my best for my people and always will, but at the end of the day while I got me a fancy suit of armour, I’m still only just one man.”

Shifting position, he eases his long legs out a little awkwardly in front of him, their feet close enough to tangle were either of them to allow it. The little self-sustaining light keeping the dark of night at bay flickers, sending shadows dancing over the ceiling of the nook they’re in, the golden glow of it licking over the grey in the other man’s hair and setting off a spark in his eyes.

It’s hard to look away from Vanth, although he makes himself. He had tried to kill this man. As such, he certainly shouldn’t be admiring him.

Vanth continues a bit quieter, “Anyway, even if you had good intentions, I still wanted to check in on you – didn’t want to leave you out there alone, not when there was the chance you could have needed help.”

“I – suppose I did. Need help.”

The memory of Vanth’s long fingers brushing back the hair that fell over his forehead, the other man tugging off a glove to carefully check his head by feel alone while the injury started to knit itself back together –

It shouldn’t have felt remarkable; shouldn’t have sent a shiver chasing itself down his spine. He still can’t explain why it did.

“There must have been a reason I reacted like that,” He would like to believe himself someone who wouldn’t resort to baseless violence.

“Well, I can tell you that I ain’t never seen anyone wearing this kind of armour before you turned up, not other than me,” Vanth picks up his worn old helmet, “And I had this here helmet off, while you were so dead set on keeping yours on – maybe there could be something in that. That or I guess I startled you.”

“You think I – attacked you – because you showed your face,” This comes with the taste of truth, like blood or metal on his tongue. He makes himself say the alternative, as poorly as the idea sits, “Or because you caught me off guard.”

And yet Vanth had called him ‘friend’ – twice now.

“I’d like to think it wasn’t the latter one,” Vanth’s eyes dip to the helmet and then back up to him again. Something quiet yet almost implacable about him for a moment, “Why do you reckon you did it? I saw you aim for my throat.”

Shit. The thought settles something cold inside him, a sharp-edged feeling of truth. He had. But –

“I don’t know,” It’s the truth. It doesn’t feel like anywhere enough, even so. But there _must_ have been a reason for it, “Where did you get your armour?”

Perhaps that will help unravel it. Perhaps it will give some explanation as to where he got his. Why it _does_ feel right wearing the helmet; why his face had felt so strange and almost wrong during the minutes in which it was off, even with Vanth’s eyes shut and head turned away.

“Got it from some Jawas,” Is the answer, and then Vanth tells him the story behind that, far too easy to just sit and listen to despite the subject matter, given his unhurried drawl – although it’s not a story, is it.

Well, it could be. After all, he only has the other man’s word when it comes to all of this. But – and it’s this ‘but’ he can’t help but pay heed to, even knowing he shouldn’t.

But something in his gut insists it’s true.

Could be he’s just a fool. But Vanth’s finishing up the tale and, while there’s something he can’t discern crawling in his lungs and stomach with discomfort at what he’s been told and with what’s been done to the armour since the loss of its original owner, there’s another part of him that’s concerned with the lives Vanth’s saved with it and the good he’s done.

The fact that, without it, he himself would be dead now and so would the child.

The latter part of that doesn’t bear even imagining.

“Mm,” Gazing down at the little one’s peaceful face, he brushes the edge of a long ear with his gloved fingers, breath catching in the back of his throat as the child stirs, mewling.

“Abaa?” Large dark eyes open, as tiny hands push out from amongst Vanth’s jacket to reach for his helmet, and something seems to click in his head –

And just like that, Din _remembers_. He remembers all of it.

-^-

“So,” Vanth’s gaze is steady on him, and Din’s convinced that his hand on the blaster hidden by his body is just the same, the other man ready to defend himself if needed, “You remember, huh?”

It’s far from escaped his notice that Vanth has seen himself positioned closer to the exit throughout; that Din will have to go past – or through – him to leave.

It’s also not escaped his notice that many another person, in such a situation, might well have threatened the kid, something Vanth has notably failed to do.

Quite the opposite, in truth.

He’s already passed over his canteen on realising the kid was stirring, and a handful of what turned out to be dried fruit. The kid had eaten the berries solemnly, his eyes huge as he first peered at Din’s helmet for no small amount of time and then looked from one man to the other, a tiny hand wrapped around Din’s thumb as he’d seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. Thereafter he’d launched into babbling, as if scolding Din and asking him where he’d been.

“I’m here now,” Din pats the child lightly on the back as the little one loses steam, nestling in against his cuirass for a moment, conscious of Vanth watching this. Turning his helmet towards the other man to indicate the change of subject, he cuts to the chase, “Where are my weapons?”

His rifle and blaster, anyway. No need to mention the ones the marshal hadn’t identified, and his jetpack is leaning next to the other man’s next the exit to the little nook.

“Safe in another one of these hollows not far off,” Vanth doesn’t pretend not to be responsible for their absence, “Undamaged, except by the dragon. Blaster looked kind of gunked up, last I saw of it. Didn’t think you’d want me to take the liberty of cleaning it.”

“You’ve done enough,” Din can’t deny the urge nagging at him to just get away. To leave with the kid and that armour, and just hole up somewhere for a while to regroup.

But the thought of shooting Vanth, of making another attempt on the man’s life or of even actually killing him, and then peeling his body out of that armour –

How could he?

He _owes_ Vanth, in too many ways and to the extent he can barely even stand to consider it, although think of it he must. If Vanth hadn’t stopped him from taking off his helmet in his confusion –

And if Vanth hadn’t attempted to retrieve them both from the dragon’s mouth, risking his own life in order to enable Din to pass over the kid –

If Vanth hadn’t left for supplies and then _come back_ again, but had just left the kid alone while Din bled out from those injuries to his head and shoulder, riddled with poison as he had been –

“Mmm,” The kid is scrabbling off Din’s knee before he can shape any of the feelings assaulting him into words good enough to leave his mouth, toddling unevenly over towards the other man.

“Oh,” Vanth darts a brief look up at Din and then back down again, a smile working its way towards the edges of his mouth, caught by some hesitance but nonetheless genuine, “Hey there, little green bean. Don’t suppose you remember me?”

“Aaah!” Contradicting said expectation, the kid seems to stumble under the force of his own enthusiasm, tripping over the hem of his clothes and catching onto the hand Vanth holds out immediately to break his fall, Din leaning forwards similarly in automatic reaction, just that bit further away.

Tiny fingers curl over the other man’s thumb much like he had Din’s, and the kid coos.

Din watches and tries not to have any opinion on this, the child then for all intents and purposes launching into a one-sided conversation comprised entirely out of excited burbles that the other man listens to patiently.

It’s possible his face behind the helmet might be trying to do something suspiciously like almost smiling.

“Yeah, but I don’t think your daddy would like it,” Vanth shoots another look at Din just as if he’d understood what was said, a laugh huffing out of him when the kid next straightens with fresh determination and scales his leg.

“You after more berries, is that what it is? Because I’ve got more berries,” He starts fishing in a pocket, a packet in there rustling even as Din goes a little tense. The kid’s delighted by the food that’s produced though – berries, just as promised – so he can relax somewhat again.

Vanth perhaps senses this or perhaps correctly deduces that the kid seems to be enjoying listening to him speak, long ears perking up in interest when he continues, “Got them all the way from Mos Eisley, you know; imported from off-world. Should have brought more grub for a growing kid though, shouldn’t I, but I didn’t want to slow down and I did think they’d make a good snack.”

Judging by the rate the kid is cramming the berries in his mouth and his gurgles of heartfelt appreciation, he agrees with this assessment.

“Mos Pelgo isn’t far off from here by jetpack,” Vanth’s gaze transfers back to Din. Some undefinable emotion in his tone behind the lightness intended for the child, while the barely hidden question there in his words is aimed at Din, “Could get hold of more tasty stuff good for filling that little belly there, depending on how your daddy feels about it.”

It’s far from escaped Din’s notice that the other man, since he’s remembered, has not called him ‘friend’. It’s understandable; he shouldn’t have any reaction to it.

He shouldn’t have had any reaction to start with. If not an enemy precisely, Vanth could well be.

Probably should be.

The stolen helmet sits on the ground next to Vanth’s hip like an accusation. Except Vanth didn’t steal it, did he. Not in the way Din had originally thought – and attacked the man for it without giving him time to explain.

“If we were to go with you to Mos Pelgo to fetch food for the child,” Din lets it hang for a moment, that ‘if’, pausing to just breathe through the implications of what he’s going to say, “There’s something I need to tell you first.”

Something he needs to tell Vanth anyway.

“It’s about that armour.”

“You know, I had an inkling it might be,” Sliding the little self-sustaining light smoothly out of reach when the child decides to scoot off his lap and scrabble for it, Vanth leans further back against the wall of the hollow, and listens while Din speaks.

“Maybe we can come to some arrangement,” He says at the end of it, but Din shakes his head.

“I’m in your debt,” He’s never been so beholden to someone before, never been so torn by it. If he take the armour from Vanth, the marshal’s town will be more or less left defenceless.

The marshal himself will be left more or less defenceless. And yet Din can’t leave without it.

And yet he and the child must leave.

“Hey,” The nudge of Vanth’s boot against his summons him back up from the incessant whirlpool of his thoughts, “Help me get rid of the dragon and we’ll consider things more than even between us. And this armour?” His brow wrinkles, mouth curving in a way that isn’t a smile for a moment as he glances down at it, “Well, I’ve long grown mighty attached and I’m not going to lie about that. But it’ll have served its purpose.”

“And?” Din’s near enough holding his breath again; he can’t help it.

“So I’ll give you it.”

-^-

And so they defeat the krayt dragon, with the help of the inhabitants of Mos Pelgo and the Tuskens, and by the end of it, Vanth has become Cobb and Din has become – well, he hasn’t told the other man his name yet, but he’s surprised himself by definitely considering it.

He’s considering other things too, has been for a while – has been since even before he remembered he was himself, in honesty – however he curses himself for a fool for it.

His head still hurts a little, just a touch of a leftover ache mirrored by some numbness to his shoulder, and he’s covered all over with the gunky residue of the acid from the dragon’s stomach, but it’s nothing compared to the unpleasant gash Cobb is sporting all down one arm and across a cheek.

“Another shirt ruined,” Is his only slightly mournful comment, before he brightens, “Right, about that drink –”

“You know I can’t remove this,” Din taps the side of his helmet, while the kid exclaims over the massive hunk of dragon meat strapped to the speeder, hankering after it regardless of just how much he’s already eaten, roasted over the fire that’s been built up close to where the beast fell.

“And that’s why, my friend,” Cobb’s unrepentantly cheerful, “I was going to suggest a straw.”

_My friend._ These words shouldn’t burn within Din’s chest with half as much warmth as they do.

“I need to get cleaned up first,” This is an agreement and they both know it. He’s also smiling and they quite possibly both know that too, “See to the kid.” Said kid is settling down in the saddlebag as they ride in the direction of Mos Pelgo, away from what looks like an impromptu party set on breaking out behind them as people eat to the fill of the meat, sleepy dark eyes taking longer to open up each time between blinks.

“You should do something about that,” Din indicates the other man’s face and arm, when Cobb fails to suggest any such thing.

“Eh, I’ve had worse,” Cobb shrugs as if he’s not got blood dripping down off his wrist to decorate this most recent pair of pants – his own, this time, and not Din’s – though his tone implies a desert dweller’s knowledge of the danger of not getting rid of the layer of sand clinging to the ragged edges of those wounds like fine powder or grit.

By the time they reach Cobb’s small house on the edge of the town, night’s fallen and the kid’s softly whistling with each breath in his sleep, and Din can’t cope with not seeing to those wounds any longer.

He gets the child wrapped up in a blanket in the basket the other man digs out to act as a crib, checks the little one remains settled, gets his gloves off and then cleans his hands while Cobb wanders off with a word about collecting those drinks.

Cobb’s set aside his weapons and helmet, if not the rest of his borrowed armour, and is juggling not only a bottle and two glasses, one equipped with the promised straw, by the time they meet as if planned around the centre of the room, but also a couple of cloths and a bottle of what appears to be solvent.

“We going to wake the kid if we stay in here?” He notices Din’s bare hands first and the gloves tucked into his belt next, swallows more of a reaction, and then glances over in the child’s direction, the enquiry genuine.

“Possibly,” Din admits. It feels almost like a set up, although it isn’t, it _isn’t_ , or if it is, it’s a mutual one.

“My room, then?” Cobb gestures vaguely to the short corridor behind him and the couple of doors it contains, and Din nods with a feeling of things spiralling towards a certain conclusion, feeling his heart beating hard in hope of it.

In want of it.

Nothing is truly foregone, however, and the face Cobb makes when Din produces the small medkit he carries in a pouch on his belt is quite something.

“You planning on offering to help me with that?” He asks, as if the question’s jerked out of him.

“Yes,” Din finds himself saying truthfully, but a little cautious, a little taken off guard.

“You going to help me get this off first too, then?” Brows rising, Cobb gestures to the cuirass with the hand on his uninjured side, “Because I could tell you that I’m not going to enjoy moving this arm much or I could say something like _if you help me with mine, then I’ll help you with yours_ , but –”

“You’re nervous,” There’s not much in the room, just tightly shuttered windows, a night stand and the bed Din backs the other man towards simply by stepping towards him, Cobb sitting down more or less as if his knees give out.

“Nah, just not so good at taking care of myself, if you have to know,” He wrinkles his nose this time, gaze elsewhere, and Din wants to touch him, to touch him in a way that involves another purpose other than patching him up, but he’s covered still in gunk from the dragon himself and those wounds really do need cleaning.

So first things first.

“You’re good at taking care of other people,” Din tells him lowly, voice dropping instinctively, not into the range he uses when the kid is crotchety or afraid or otherwise on edge, but something perhaps adjacent in some ways to it.

Something for the close quarters; something that invites the other man into letting go some of his tension, into leaning in closer.

“Don’t pretend you’re not the same,” Sure enough Cobb relaxes a bit, especially when he’s helped himself to a glass of spotchka and poured another for Din that he leaves waiting for the time being on the nightstand, concentrating on unfastening the buckles on the cuirass as he crouches between the other man’s knees.

Cobb’s watching him, even as he tips his head back to swallow, throat working as he drains the glass before setting it aside as well and collecting one of the cloths.

“All right with me touching your helmet?” He asks, to which Din nods with only a small amount of habitual caution, and so they engage in a sort of slow shifting of limbs in which Cobb dabs solvent onto the cloth and carefully swipes said helmet clean of the sticky residue, letting Din finally see clearly through the visor for the first time in hours, while Din controls his breathing with equal care and doesn’t let himself sit still under the feeling of it like he wants to, but continues working on unwrapping the other man – which is something else he very much wants – getting the cuirass off Cobb and then the ruined red shirt beneath.

“Ah, don’t make that face,” Cobb says when he’s down to his undershirt, pieces of armour in a neat pile not far from the bed and the gash on his arm is seeking to decorate the faded duvet with the same blood still dappling his pants.

“You don’t know what face I’m making,” Din returns lightly enough, wrapping the fingers of one hand loose around the other man’s wrist and using the other cloth to carefully wipe away what he can of the sand around the edges of the wound, gentle as he can make it, before using a bacta-soaked wipe to clean away the granules further in and get the gash on its way towards healing, pretending not to notice the way Cobb stills and his jaw tightens.

“Never got treatment like this when I was younger,” He admits when Din’s seated at an angle besides him for access, repeating the process with the wound on his cheek, “Got to leave anything and just hope it didn’t get infected, or flush it out with whatever cheap alcohol I managed to barter for or thieve, and that was that.” What’s visible of his body pays testament to the truth of this, a network of poorly healed scars peeking out from beneath the undershirt, “You can tell me all you like about how it’s just asking for the rot to set in from the sand, but I guess I never quite got used –” He glances at the bloodied cloth Din places aside and raises the solvent-thick cloth in his own hand, starting work on one of Din’s pauldrons, “To the necessity of dealing with it for my own part.”

“These should heal up all right,” Din hears what isn’t said in all of this and understands, or thinks he’s on his way towards understanding, lowering his helmet in a nod at the gashes, hand still holding the cloth to the wound on Cobb’s cheek. His thumb brushing just a little, both deliberately and not at once, through the rasp of the other man’s beard.

“I ought to thank you,” Cobb tips his head into it, not away, “I’m grateful. Not just for this, but for the dragon as well.”

The bleeding’s stopped now and the wounds already looking better, and it doesn’t take anything at all for Din to nod like he’s confident of it when Cobb runs his fingers over the pauldron he’s holding instead of the cloth, and asks if he can remove it.

“Yeah,” Din lets him, and then he lets Cobb remove the other one and then his cuirass and then he works to take off the rest of the beskar himself, except for his helmet, and Cobb folds and refolds the cloth with the solvent on as he wipes each piece.

It’s not as thorough a cleansing as Din will need to give it later, but it’s definitely good to have the worst of the mess off it. He drops down to his knees on the floor almost without thinking, one hand going to balance on Cobb’s thigh just above his knee, and hears the other man inhale shallowly.

“Let me?” Reaching out for his own glass, Din takes advantage of the straw to take a drink, lingering over the taste of the alcohol and the thought of how the same flavour might also be lingering in the other man’s mouth, before running the fingers of his other hand around to the back of Cobb’s leg, spanning his calve, coming to a stop at the top of his boot.

There’s no excuse for this other than that he wants to help Cobb be comfortable, which won’t hold up if asked, as they both know that’s ultimately not the reason for this.

“Sure,” Cobb seems happier to lose his boots than he did with the application of bacta even so, going so far as to raise his other foot in readiness when Din reaches for it, “Although don’t you dare say this is anything to do with you ‘owing’ me or being in my debt or any crap like that, or I’m shutting this down right here, right now.” Long fingers point out the armour now ready to be handed over into Din’s care, “As per the terms of our deal, we’re square. Got it?”

“Got it,” Din puts the boots to one side together, amused, and then pauses with both hands lightly resting on the other man’s knees, before cocking his helmet. Runs his hands a couple of inches higher up, wrinkling the fabric of Cobb’s admittedly worse for wear pants, “Going to let me?”

Getting him out of them will just be doing him a favour, really.

“Sure,” Cobb agrees, and so it becomes shortly apparent that things are headed precisely where Din had been so hoping they would. He hoists himself up again to straddle Cobb’s lap this time, one foot left on the floor and the other knee braced on the mattress next to Cobb’s hip, while Cobb gains a very gratifying flush and gasps a little as Din rests a hand against the small of his back to help him lift up just enough to wriggle his pants down to allow access.

He’s half hard, cock soft enough yet that it’s delightful for Din to close his bare fingers around it and feel it twitch and fill out further against his palm as he works the foreskin back gently to thumb at the head.

“Shit,” Cobb hisses at the touch to the slit at the tip, and then again when Din gives the thickening shaft a lazy tug, and then he’s grappling with the belt keeping Din’s underarmour and flightsuit in place, hands gone clumsy in eagerness, “Can this all come off? Tell me it can come off.”

“It can come off,” So long as the helmet doesn’t currently, Din’s entirely happy with this. The thing’s pretty much stiff as a board from that drying gunk anyway, and shedding it is undeniably a relief, the hungry noises Cobb makes as he runs greedy hands over exposed skin going straight down into his own cock.

“You want to – to shower first or after?” Cobb manages, words nearly lost to a groan, when Din’s crowding back into his lap, boots kicked off, cocks bumping together not entirely unlike a kiss.

“Can you navigate your shower without a light?” Is his own question, because while he’s endured sonics in the past still in armour, it doesn’t mean he has to like it, and briefly turning off the HUD in his helmet only confirms just how dark the bedroom they’re in is when he drags himself upwards to palm off the light.

If he takes the helmet off under his own terms, then there’s something almost empowering about the prospect. Something undeniably appealing about the thought of what he can do – and they can do to each other – without it.

Plenty they could still do with it on; he’s managed more than well enough in the past. But Cobb had insisted Din not remove it when he himself didn’t know any better, and that _means_ something.

It means he trusts him. It means he –

It means he _wants_ this. And he wants more than to just ‘manage’.

“Probably?” Cobb hedges, and then gets it, “Oh fuck. You mean you’d be okay with–?”

“No living thing may see my face,” Din echoes far more lightly than he feels, “So if you can’t see –” Stepping back over to the bed, he runs his hands up the length of Cobb’s arms to his shoulders, his neck, and then his jaw, climbing back on top of him to grind down in the other man’s lap. Grinning to himself as Cobb startles and his cock jerks, before he rocks back up against Din in return.

“Better turn your nightvision on just in case to at least get us there,” Cobb rests a hand against the centre of Din’s chest as if expecting him to make room for them both to get up off the bed and relocate, huffing a laugh when Din slides a hand in under his back again and cups his ass this time instead, “Hm, like that, is it?”

“Like that,” Din gets his other hand in position and then lifts him, not entirely easily given their height difference, but succeeding ultimately without undue effort. The task made much easier when Cobb wraps long legs around his hips, and the nightvision does indeed help them not topple over or crash into anything on the journey into the refresher, Cobb’s arms slung around his shoulders and face buried in the crook of Din’s neck.

“You do realise this is so undignified,” He’s complaining, a laugh and a groan both in the words, and doesn’t make things any easier by insistently wriggling, making Din stumble when he nuzzles and then bites, Din’s breath shuddering out of his chest.

He has to press Cobb up against the wall next to the door to the refresher as a result, and they spend a while occupied there, hands wandering, until he palms said door open and pulls back just enough to aim a look at the other man’s face, brushing aside a few strands of hair, committing all the laughter lines and the signs of Cobb’s faint flush to memory before turning off the HUD.

“Are you ready?” He lets go of Cobb with only a small qualm, fingers not wanting to part with warm scarred skin even for the time it takes to reach up to his helmet.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Cobb asks in return, nominally casual, although he’s breathing quickly, almost as quickly as Din, “You really all right with this?”

He’s shut his eyes, Din realises on letting go of the helmet with one hand to brush his fingers across the other man’s cheeks. Even though it’s dark.

The knowledge sends something melting inside him, warmth spilling down inside his ribs.

“Yes,” He takes the helmet off then, takes it off and uses the hand at Cobb’s jaw to draw him in and kiss him, noses bumping a little at first and the attempt not quite lined up right, but then they both shift and Cobb kisses back, groaning heartily, and things escalate fast.

“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Cobb’s hissing when Din finally backs him into the refresher and they manage not to fall in the shower, the feeling of the sonics starting up barely noticeable in comparison to the heat of the other man’s body as Din gets him against the wall again in the cramped space, tucking a hand under Cobb’s thigh and hitching it up.

“ _Mm_ ,” He grinds in against him properly this time, precome easing the slide, and things get very hot and increasingly messy in a certain sense, which is rather the opposite of the reason for coming in here, although kissing Cobb harder and then working his way down to taste the other man’s nipples and then his belly button is an immensely satisfactory distraction from the fact they’re getting stickier and sweatier instead of less.

Cobb slaps the shower off in the end, when they can both pretend the grime from the earlier fight is gone, and none of the rest of it matters anyway, only the feeling of his hands running through Din’s hair and the way he pants and shakes when Din mouths at his hip.

“Not in here,” There’s not space for much more though, although he’s entirely tempted, but it’s even _more_ tempting to lead Cobb stumbling out back into his bedroom, heedless of the other man’s half-hearted groan of protest at the delay, and for both of them to bang their toes on the way back to bed.

Falling onto the mattress rather than off it, thankfully, Din grapples Cobb up on top of him, and then up further.

“You – yeah?” Cobb doesn’t have any complaints about straddling Din’s shoulders and rocking down so the head of his cock bumps against his chin, as it turns out, and nor does he when Din gets his hands up cupping the other man’s ass again, and opens his mouth to take his cock in.

“ _Fuck yeah_ ,” He says around him or a close enough approximation of it, the burn of his own arousal only climbing ever higher as he squeezes his handfuls in encouragement, listening to the way Cobb half chuckles and moans and tries to hold back as Din urges quite the opposite, prompting Cobb to stifle a curse and rock in against his tongue as if unintentionally.

“Fuck, sorry – sorry. You don’t – You really want me to –?” Cobb sounds wrecked already, hands clutching Din’s shoulders as if in the attempt to hide their tremble, so Din just huffs through his nose and sucks at him harder in place of drawing back to verbally make his point. Working his tongue up against the sensitive vein and the underside of the head until he breaks through Cobb’s restraint and the other man’s hips take over from his brain, thrusting his cock ever deeper into Din’s mouth while cursing up a blue streak.

Din gets him biting his own fist and coming like that after no more than a few minutes, catching the other man afterwards when his whole body seems to give out, Cobb half slumping on top of him before sliding down bonelessly into his arms.

“All right?” Din kisses him, on the cheek at first in question, and then on the mouth when Cobb shakes himself, reviving, and turns eagerly into it, and then there’s just kissing for a long stretch of time, long enough he can feel Cobb’s cock making a valiant attempt to start reviving again.

“Damn am I fucking all right,” He gets mumbled on going to reach for it, and then Cobb’s nudging away Din’s hands and sitting up and back enough to just about allow movement, “Okay you, over you go.”

“Over?” Din submits to this even as he raises an eyebrow, arranging himself face down on the mattress beneath the other man.

“Yeah,” Cobb plasters himself against Din’s back immediately, mouth almost unerringly locating the back of his neck, “Like this.”

“ _Yeah_ , like this,” Din echoes without even really realising, entirely caught up in the hands running down his spine and the kisses that follow them, and he’s spreading his legs without really thinking about it when Cobb runs gentle fingertips down the insides of his thighs. Shivering at the kisses pressed to the small of his back and then to each ass cheek, and then Cobb’s humming as he uses his thumbs to spread them and, and _oh_.

“Oh fuck,” Din’s not had anyone do this for him before; flails for a pillow and shoves his face into it to muffle himself after the very first lick, “Oh _fuck_.”

“Yeah?” Cobb draws back just long enough to enquire, which gets Din then flailing backwards, grasping for the other man in hope of shoving him back where he was and gets a chuckle in return for the entirely failed effort, and the flat of Cobb’s tongue running leisurely over his hole once again.

He gets just as many noises out of Din as Din did out of him by the end, especially when he winds a hand around to get hold of Din’s cock on top of the rest of it, and the sheer strength of the orgasm almost catches Din by surprise – he has a second to think _fuck, please don’t let this wake the kid,_ and then he’s all but howling into the pillow, thighs clenching unintentionally around the other man until Cobb’s huffing a laugh right up against his hole, and that only serves to drag a final burst of orgasm out of him, the feeling of it so good it almost hurts.

“What a way to almost go,” Cobb’s still laughing when Din wrestles him back up so they can lie together, only fondness and a fair amount of arousal in the sound, Din slinging an arm around the other man’s neck as Cobb winds his around Din’s hips, the pair of them safe and sweating and warm in the dark, “Got to get my mouth on your cock next; see if you finish the job like that.”

“I’m not going to kill you with my thighs,” Din can only protest, even as a semi-reluctant laugh of his own strives to rattle free from his chest.

“How about if you pick me up again and fuck me against the wall next time instead, then?” Is the suggestion he gets, although Cobb yawns a second later, and buries his face back in Din’s shoulder with a huff of embarrassment this time around, “Uh, maybe tomorrow. Afternoon. I’ll suck your cock in the morning, if we wake before the green bean.”

“It seems you’ve got it all planned out,” Din doesn’t mention that, by rights, he and the child really ought to be leaving. After all, in some ways, it feels like they’ve barely arrived. And loose and sated and happy as he is, the thought of losing this doesn’t bear contemplating.

So he doesn’t, at least not for now. He can allow himself this much for once, even if he shouldn’t. He’s been doing a whole lot of ‘shouldn’t’ lately, after all, and it’s got him this. And it’s got the child a good night’s sleep and the prospect of a day playing with the local kids, which Din is aware is an all too rare treat.

“You have any objections to that plan, friend?” Cobb asks a little softer, as if aware Din is nearly asleep. He should put his helmet back on, but –

He trusts. He trusts in this man and the dark and in Cobb to do the right thing.

That trust still feels like a rare and precious thing.

“Din,” Says Din, in lieu of informing him of how his heart might just burst, and Cobb makes a noise that highly implies he might kiss him, if his mouth hadn’t been where it’s just been.

“Din,” He repeats instead, and it doesn’t matter that Din can’t see; he knows he’s smiling, “ _Din_.”

“Yeah,” Smiling just as much in return, Din agrees, and runs his hand back through the other man’s hair, enjoying the feel of it and the way Cobb catches his hand to press a kiss against his knuckles.

“Yeah,” For all they haven’t really said anything, it feels like they understand each other entirely anyway.

Turning his head to brush his mouth against Cobb’s forehead, Din thinks of the child sleeping warm in his blanket in the other room. Breathing in the scent of the man pressed just as warm against him as he closes his eyes without qualm or concern, and sleeps.


End file.
